Temple and Tomb: Reimagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem

Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre,
The Courtauld Institute of Art,
Somerset House,
Strand, London
WC2R 0RN

13.00 – 18.10, Friday 15 March (with registration from 12.30)
09.30 – 17.40, Saturday 16 March (with registration from 09.00)

God and humankind had been at one in paradise. The sanctuary of Jerusalem’s Temple, whose decoration recalled Eden, was in Jewish thought the navel of the world, the intersection of heaven and earth.

The Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. The Christian Melito was already writing of Golgotha as the world’s centre by 160 CE. Many more of the Temple’s mythologies – and supposedly of its Solomonic and later artefacts – would be transferred to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built by Constantine and completed in the construction of its Rotunda. Justinian and his panegyrists spoke in their turn of Hagia Sophia as the new Temple.

The Dome of the Rock was probably designed to counter and surpass the Holy Sepulchre of the ‘Christian polytheists’. The Crusaders spoke of Al-Aqsa Mosque as the Temple or Palace of Solomon, and the Dome of the Rock as the Temple of the Lord in which the infant Jesus had been presented to God.

The sanctity and significance of Jerusalem were recreated throughout Christendom in centrally planned churches and architectural motifs, in liturgical forms and in civic myths. In this Forum we study the expressions of the Temple and the Sepulchre in Christian architecture, and medieval devotion – both Christian and Muslim – to the holy places.

The Courtauld Institute of Art and the Temple Church are coming together for their second joint-conference in March 2013. We will again spend time in the Temple’s Round Church, itself one of the grandest recreations of Jerusalem to survive in the West.

To book a place: £26 (£16 students, Courtauld staff/students and concessions)
BOOK ONLINE: http://courtauld-institute.digitalmuseum.co.uk Or send a cheque made payable to ‘Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Co-ordinator, Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, stating the event title ‘Temple and Tomb’.
For further information, email ResearchForumEventscourtauld.ac.uk or call: 07834 521471

Organised by The Rev’d Robin Griffith-Jones (Master of The Temple; and senior lecturer in Theology, King's College London), Professor Eric Fernie (The Courtauld Institute of Art) and Professor David Park (The Courtauld Institute of Art.

PROGRAMME

Friday 15 March (DAY 1)
12.30 – 13.00 Registration

SESSION 1
13.00 – 13.40 Robin Griffith-Jones (Temple Church, King’s College London): Welcome and Introduction: the
Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem and their Representation ‘figuraliter’
13.40 – 14.20 John Wilkinson (British School of Archaeology, Jerusalem): Church and Jerusalem Temple
14.20 – 15.00 Robert Hillenbrand (The University of Edinburgh): Medieval Muslim Veneration of the Dome of the
Rock
15.00 – 15.40 Cecily Hennessy (Christie’s): Jerusalem and Byzantium: the Ninth to Twelfth Centuries
15.40 – 16.20 Anthony Eastmond (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Jerusalem in the Caucasus?
16.20 – 16.50 COFFEE/TEA BREAK (Tea/coffee provided in Seminar room 1)

SESSION 2
16.50 – 17.30 David Phillipson (University of Cambridge.): Jerusalem and the Ethiopian Church: the Evidence of
Lalibela
17.30 – 18.10 Martin Biddle (University of Oxford): Imitating the Holy Sepulchre: Dimensions, Plans, and
Evidence
18.15 RECEPTION at Temple Church

Saturday 16 March (DAY 2)
09.00 – 09.30 Registration

SESSION 3
09.30 – 10.10 Denys Pringle (Cardiff University): The Crusader Church of the Holy Sepulchre
10.10 – 10.50 Jaroslav Folda (University of North Carolina): The Holy Sepulchre in the Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem
10.50 – 11.30 Alexei Lidov (Lomonosov Moscow State University): The Holy Fire at the Tomb of Christ: the
Impact of a Regular Miracle on Medieval Iconography and Hierotopy
11.30 – 12.00 COFFEE/TEA BREAK (Tea/coffee provided in Seminar room 1)

SESSION 4
12.00 – 12.40 Colin Morris (University of Southampton): The Sepulchre in the West
12.40 – 13.20 Michael Gervers (University of Toronto): The Use and Meaning of the Rotunda, with Particular
Reference to Twelfth-Century Examples in England
13.20 – 14.20 BREAK FOR LUNCH (lunch not provided except for the speakers and chairs)

SESSION 5
14.20 – 15.00 David Park (The Courtauld Institute of Art):‘built in the Jewish fashion’: the Round Chapel of
Woodstock Palace in a Crusader Context
15.00 – 15.40 Nicole Hamonic (University of Tennessee): Penitents and Pardons: the New Temple and the Holy
Land
15.40 – 16.20 COFFEE/TEA BREAK (Tea/coffee provided in Seminar room 1)

SESSION 6
16.20 – 17.00 David Ekserdjian (University of Leicester): The Jerusalem Temple in the Imagination of the Italian
Renaissance
17.00 – 17.40 Eric Fernie (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Tomb, Temple and Centrally-Planned Vessels.
17.40 END

Download programme here: http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/events/2013/spring/mar15_TempleandTomb.shtml